Local and Vocal: Domestic Violence Awareness Month

An important follow up to our Women and Poverty: Issues Facing Staunton's Working Poor event. In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October, please join us on October 14, 2017 at 2 PM:

It's estimated that the majority of homeless women, and nearly a third of homeless families (women with children) are fleeing domestic violence. Poverty is part of the backdrop of what enables men's violence by increasing women's (financial) dependence on men (and, thus, perceived vulnerability), and the gender wage gap historically has served as a salve to men's sense of entitlement. (Working class men who are dominated by other men at work have had "control" over women's domestic labor and financial dominance within the private sphere.) Patriarchy and capitalism, in other words, scratch each other's backs. That's the abstract and academic backdrop. But the power of the Women and Poverty discussion is that it highlighted the lived realities of what that means for women on the ground. As Audre Lorde put it, "Survival is not an academic skill." I honestly do not know a woman in my life who has not experienced some degree of violence at the hands of a man ... we can do better. We must do better.